


Symmetry

by AshVee



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 18:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12415725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshVee/pseuds/AshVee
Summary: Cersei Lannister had spent a long time considering her sins, considering how things had played out between the families. As the world burns outside King's Landing, as winter calls and the world is changing, she considers the eloquence of symmetry.





	Symmetry

Cersei sat alone on the Iron Throne, the crown seated perfectly on her short, golden hair. There were things you did in life, and there were things you didn’t. Assuring she was her best, making sure she looked immaculate on the throne? Those were things she did. 

Things she didn’t do...those things that spoiled her stomach, made her sick with grief, well, they were becoming more and more common. Lately, it had been thinking on the sins she’d committed and their consequences. 

It started in that damned tower in Winterfell, when she’d sat on her knees, skirts rucked up around her hips, and watched Jaime push Brandon Stark out a window. She’d have done well to stay on her knees that day, to stay on her knees and pray for the sin she’d committed. Cersei Lannister had never repented, and so she’d stood and hidden behind her mask. She’d told Catelyn Stark a story to hide her guilt, and then, so long and yet not so long later, her precious Tommen had flown of his own accord. 

It continued on the steps to the Sept. She’d known then, even with the sun on her face and the world at her feet, she’d known. Joff had run away with himself, and she hadn’t brought him to heel. She couldn’t have brought him to heel, even if she’d wanted, so she watched as a man did her bidding and her son betrayed her word. Ned Stark’s head had flown from his shoulders, skittered across the stone and dropped down the stairs. 

She’d known, but she hadn’t until recently. The payment for that sin had come later, at the hands of her brother. It took a long time to see that connection, such a long time. She’d told Ned to repent. She’d promised him his life if he bent the knee. She’d promised him the lives of his daughters, and he had done as he was told. He’d spoken the words. 

He’d been betrayed. Just like her father had been betrayed by the snake that was her brother.

When news of Robb Stark’s death at the hands of Walder Frey reached her, she was pleased. It was a battle fought and won, not with sword and arrow but with deception and treatise. She was good at those wars, the ones she could manipulate, but the initial joy wore her stomach to ulcers. It was thrice bad luck to kill a man at table. 

Joff died at feast, and it was the start of her world crumbling. 

Myrcella, beautiful, perfect, pure, Myrcella, died as she was returning home, as she was finally, after so long amongst the enemy, coming back to the family that loved her. The world was a dangerous place, and as a hostage in the hands of those that would see your family brought low, it was even more treacherous. Myrcella died running home. Rickon Stark, word reached her later, died with an arrow through his back as he fled Ramsey Bolton, as he fled toward the Stark line.

Cersei Lannister’s world had come down to power and family, and now, as she sat an Iron Throne alone, with none of her children playing below her in the hall, no father to watch on proudly, no mother…

Well, there had been no mother for some time now. 

She gripped the armrests hard until her knuckles bled white. White...white was a color for winter, a color that was falling even this far south, from the sky. Except, among the fluttering promise of winter, there was the flittering, skittering grey of ash. The world outside her Landing, her kingdom, was burning, and the people along with it. 

She’d spurned the chance to end this without war, without bloodshed and death, as she’d spurned most things in her life that made her look weak. Compromise, her father used to say, was the mark of a great man or the mark of a weak minded one. Cersei had always thought he’d meant the latter. 

“And so the world burns, and you are Queen of it.” The whispered voice was at her ear, and she tensed only a moment before she recognized the smooth, eloquence of her brother’s words. An arm wrapped around her, and she smiled, bringing a hand up to embrace the elbow at her chest. 

He’d returned to her in this, at least. 

Her smile was echoed low on her throat, a bright red gash opened up, wide and smiling. As the blood warmed her breast, as it stained her beautiful gown, the only thought she had was that Catelyn Stark had died gurgling, just as she would.


End file.
